Effectively Bridging Lync and Legacy Communication Nodes in a Mixed Environment

The fusion of numerous communication types, combining the best of Presence and other unified communications capabilities, along with collaboration suites, desktop productivity and mobile endpoint support, presents a strong call-to-action for many enterprises to leverage the operational efficiencies enabled in the Lync environment. However, it is imperative to carefully plan how, when, and where Lync is deployed in order to maximize the benefits and minimize disruption to business operation.

Most enterprises are best served by a migration process when looking to implement Lync into their environment. Whether this is accomplished on a geographic basis or on a functional or departmental trial basis. There will be a period of time, during which the enterprise will be operating a hybrid or mixed environment comprising of a variety of nodes and those operating in the Lync environment.

This document will address strategies and tactical elements that can be employed to effectively facilitate the migration from legacy through hybrid, and eventually to a fully Lync-optimized environment.